News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

shortimer

Ask HN: Music sampling fun / beat box for 7 year old?

My son really enjoys making “songs” using what I can only describe as “mouth noises....” some combination of words, lip-smacking, humming, humming, and various other mouth-generated sound efforts ...like a bad beat-boxer mixed with a bad Skrillex mix.He does this all spontaneously....he’s not recording anything.He’s 7 and has no computer skills (we are a Windows family) or musical instrument...

( Read More... | 2 comments | 3 points | on HN )
This is only personal experience, but multiple/many data points in that personal experience. I'm familiar with government departments where 20%+ of the employees do essentially no work whatsoever. Their assigned work languishes indefinitely, until it eventually looks bad enough on some chart that it gets assigned to someone else.

That "someone else" is often a hardworking, loyal employee who does their best to earn their pay (thank you, to those people!!). But their attitude is ground down over time by watching those other people do literally nothing, and eventually get promoted "because seniority."

So I fundamentally disagree with your premise that you could transplant that population into a business. I'm certainly familiar with freeloads in business, but I'd struggle to come up with an example company where 1/5 or more of employees do no work at all over multiple decades and then retire with a pension.

Ask HN: Lists of IPs that are blacklisted, anonymizers, etc.

There are plenty of companies that will sell a fully packaged service that includes risk scoring of an IP address, based on information about IP addresses, including whether they are blacklisted, come from TOR, etc. For an example, see the second page of this marketing PDF from F5: https://www.f5.com/pdf/products/silverline-threat-intelligence-datasheet.pdfHowever, I'm having a harder time...

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )
Re:HTTPS on Stack Overflow: The End of a Long Road on Monday May 22, 2017 @02:24PM (#14395806)
At our place, we put a redirect on the front end networking device that detected if a browser couldn't support more modern encryption protocols, and sent them to an HTTP information page (instead of to the application itself) if so. This allowed us to update the core app to force newer protocols, while still providing some sort of UX for those left behind. We used Piwik to track the hits on the redirect page to get a sense for how many users were left behind.
Re:Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @12:59PM (#14149328)
Being another person giving you advice may be irritating, but on the off-chance it helps, in my area (Northeast USA) there are places where people who need help "living" can do just that. They get a room, food, help with transportation, and "recovery" (life) planning assistance, and it is "free" (their Medicare/Medicaid). They are free to get jobs, and some do, either at partner facilities where they do small repetitive tasks, or in a traditional job in the community.

The #1 challenge is quality - as a parent, you'd have to be and stay involved, as even within a single organization, the quality of each "house" can vary really significantly based on the people who work there, and further, can drift over time as the staff evolves.

Anyway, here's to you; parenting is never easy.

edit: grammar

Re:Google Earth Redesigned on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @09:06AM (#14138465)
I thought that their imaging was all from satellite, but this image seems to show a very-close-to-the-camera windmill which would seem to hint at a drone....? https://earth.google.com/web/@32.65401271,128.717528,189.113...
Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year on Monday April 17, 2017 @01:56PM (#14132980)
The guideline doesn't say "don't call people names"; they say "don't call names." Here's the text:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Re:Fintech Firms Get Chance to Apply for Banking License on Thursday March 16, 2017 @10:17AM (#13885175)
New fintechs who want to move money have to obtain a Money Service Business license in every state where they operate. In almost all cases, that means they have to get 48ish MSB licenses (a state or two don't require them). Each one can be both complicated and expensive to obtain and maintain.

This new license would let those fintechs instead obtain a single license (and set of rules, and costs, etc) for nationwide use.

Re:We don't need a Tech Lead on Friday December 02, 2016 @09:02AM (#13088578)
Isn't the underlying assumption here that the team members know everything they need to know to make a decision?

While that may be true for, say, algorithm selection, I would argue that, at least in larger organizations, there are overarching architecture or standards that need to be considered, and that it may be a waste for the individual team members to constantly keep track of.

We had a super-smart team come in a few years ago, and work very independently to come up with an awesome standalone solution that worked in no way, shape, or form with the millions of lines of installed code. There's an argument to be made that perhaps that's great and they were not constrained by legacy code, but decisions like that should be made purposefully, not based on how a few smart people who know almost nothing about the broader business or technology feel.

Re:Database versioning best practices on Monday August 10, 2015 @12:15PM (#10035564)
We're using Delphix too. Complements an approach like this, doesn't replace it. We use Liquibase to support the schema-as-code concept; it's enforced by no one outside Sr. DBAs being able to make such changes directly in anything other than Dev (lower-than-QA) environments.

Delphix is terrific for having production-like data in your test environments ("like," because you'd better be masking sensitive information from prod before it gets written in test.

The issue we've had with Delphix is performance. It absolutely pounds on the storage system, and tends to suck up all available bandwidth and CPU that's made available to it. If you resource it properly, it's amazing.

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2015) on Friday May 01, 2015 @10:26AM (#9471499)
Bottomline Technologies | http://bottomline.com | Portsmouth, NH or South Portland, ME | Architect | Onsite Only

Bottomline Technologies (NASDAQ: EPAY), headquartered in beautiful Portsmouth, NH, is a global industry leader of cloud-based payment, invoice and digital banking solutions. Our solutions are used to streamline, automate and manage processes involving: payments, invoicing, global cash management, supply chain finance and transactional documents. Over 10,000 organizations throughout 77 countries, trust Bottomline to meet their needs for cost reduction, competitive differentiation and optimization of working capital.

The Software Architect will interface with the development team for the purpose of design and planning, implementation, integration and support of our products. This role is responsible for determining the integrated software architecture solutions that meet performance, usability, scalability, reliability, and security needs. In addition, the architect is expected to research and recommend technology to meet application requirements.

    Responsibilities:

    Technical review of proposed client software architectures
    Work with development managers on implementation and integration work estimates
    Custom JEE application design and architecture
    Custom JEE application implementation and implementation team leadership
    Application performance testing, recommendations and tuning
    Design, lead and perform custom JEE application solutions throughout dev lifecycle
    Maintain a baseline of IT/JEE industry knowledge to advise on technical trends 
Apply at https://home.eease.com/recruit2/?id=9491081&t=1
Re:Why reading a book 100 times is a great idea on Tuesday February 10, 2015 @05:39PM (#9030401)
I've watched Groundhog Day probably 100 times. For six or so months, I left it on repeat on the main house TV (I lived alone at the time).
Re:A Xenon flash will cause the Raspberry Pi 2 to freeze on Saturday February 07, 2015 @09:27PM (#9016194)
Can the original poster just try putting a sheet of cardboard in front of the flash and see if it affects the 'scope results?
Re:The End of Guitar Center on Wednesday February 04, 2015 @07:56PM (#9001121)
Seconded. This seems like a way-too-dramatic writeup of private company which comes to the same conclusion folks have been coming to for a while, based on my 30 second Google search.

I guess it's relevant for musicians and Bain Capital, but he does come across as a hyper quack.

Re:Ask HN: Getting started, when there's no anonymous on Monday December 22, 2014 @12:15PM (#8783936)
Thanks...agree that we all start somewhere, I'm just really anxious about starting on a global stage. Appreciate the response.
Re:Ask HN: Getting started, when there's no anonymous on Monday December 22, 2014 @12:14PM (#8783930)
Ok...thanks, the balanced perspective of the community in looking at experience and mistakes is helpful. I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way, so I appreciate the feedback.
Re:Ask HN: Getting started, when there's no anonymous on Monday December 22, 2014 @12:12PM (#8783914)
Thanks for sharing the first-hand experience!

Ask HN: Getting started, when there's no anonymous

How do you get a foothold in this era of no one forgetting anything, ever? I have taken to heart all the advice about not posting Facebook pictures involving me doing keg stands, but I'm terrified of setting up anything on my domain or submitting any fixes on github because a few years from now, they will be ridiculous looking and show my humble beginnings.Failing in the Valley has a certain...

( Read More... | 10 comments | 4 points | on HN )